MERRIMACK Release New Single “Wrong” (Depeche Mode Cover)

MERRIMACK, the French black metal band active since 1994, release a new single through Season of Mist: a cover of “Wrong,” written by Martin L. Gore and originally recorded by Depeche Mode for their 2009 album Sounds of the Universe. The track runs 2:59 and is available exclusively on all digital platforms.

Stream “Wrong” (Depeche Mode Cover): https://orcd.co/merrimackwrong

The cover has its roots in a long-standing personal devotion. Perversifier, who proposed the idea to his bandmates, describes Depeche Mode’s post-1984 output as having “only grown better over the years,” and singles out “Wrong” as a song whose original “already carried more darkness than even Black Metal rarely reaches.” The instrumental was tracked during the The Acausal Mass sessions at Necromorbus Studio in 2012—committed to tape and then left there, shelved for over a decade before the band returned to record the vocals and see it through to release. The result, in Perversifier’s words, is a recording that “highlights just how dark the original song already is”: the composition preserved note for note, with the band’s only contribution being, as he puts it, “the level of violence that Black Metal can bring, while staying completely faithful to every note of the original composition.” Where Gore’s version channels the song’s obsessive self-negation through cold synth-pop, Merrimack’s rendering strips away any distance the original’s arrangements might have offered.

Their most recent full-length, Of Grace and Gravity (2024), marked another step forward in a career defined by refusal to dilute—a record that drew on the same uncompromising aesthetic convictions the band have held since their founding, sharpened further by three decades of practice.

Of Grace and Gravity is out now via Season of Mist.

Order: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/MerrimackGraceGravity